The Boulder Ranger District had the flood recovery meeting last night. The turnout was pretty light – more rangers than guests. Actually it was good to meet more of the local rangers. A side note – Cat Luna has taken a new position and will be moving to New Mexico to work in the Carson National Forest near Taos. She will be at the OHV meeting on the 29th.

There were several maps available detailing roads that were damaged in the flood and which ones are scheduled for repair work this season. A point that was stressed was that the schedules are continually changing as the get better access and begin work. Some projects will be easier than expected, some will be more difficult and take longer.

Initially the Forest Service will be focusing on areas near Jamestown. The have secured funding to support a 10 person work crew that will be used exclusively for flood damage repair work. As the Jamestown area work is completed, they will move to other areas. The website has some specific lists of the roads needing work.

The Flood recovery team is an additional 6 people within the FS that will be reviewing the conditions and needs of the roads throughout the BRD.

They have also secured the support of a dedicated helicopter to be used for fire support as needed this season. This was needed due to the number of backcountry roads that are not currently useable.

Some specific road conditions that are of interest to the OHV community:

Left Hand Canyon: will remain closed until they are able to complete a number of repairs and improvements to the area. They did stress that they are committed to reopening the area, just not until it is ready.

Gillespie Gulch: will never reopen, the road suffered significant damage from the flood and will be decommissioned.

Pierson Park: Will be closed until they can do a more extensive assessment of the damage. A significant land flow from Twin Sisters Peak sliced through the road and made it impassable.

There wasn’t any discussion yesterday about volunteer opportunities. It will likely come up at the next OHV meeting, I’ll keep you posted.

I have to admit this feels a bit too opportunistic for the BRD to shut down more OHV trails. I am not insensitive to the flood damage and the impact it has had to the people that live there, but it shouldn't be an open invitation to give up on areas or use the flood damage as an excuse to decommission trails. We need more support from the community to make sure that doesn't happen. I'm guilty of taking things for granted, but we need to try and get the word out and try and drum up more support for helping the BRD get things done and repair the damage. What else can we do?